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Super Bowl Ads

For a Browns fan watching this year’s Super Bowl, the best part was the commercials.

The cost of commercials in 2009 was $3 million for a 30-second spot – up 10% from $2.7 million in 2008 and up 17% from $2.5 million in 2007. Companies like Pedigree, Castrol, Denny’s and 25 other advertisers spent this huge sum because they know that it serves them well to continue marketing in a down economy. Plus, 97.5 million viewers watched last year’s Super Bowl, either on TV or online, and the same number of viewers was expected this year. In fact, this year’s Super Bowl was the most-watched Super Bowl ever with 98.7 million viewers. It was also the number two telecast of all time behind only the M*A*S*H series finale in 1983 which had 106 million viewers (and far less competition as there were far fewer channels at the time).

Add to that the fact that, even though we have the technology to fast forward through commercials, this is one show where people arguably look forward to the commercials as much as the game itself. Actually, according to a 2005 survey in Advertising Age, “half of those who watch the Super Bowl in the United States tune in specifically for the adverts.” This year’s commercials didn’t disappoint. Nearly all of the commercials that tried to be funny were actually funny, in my opinion, so it was tough to pick a favorite. An unreasonably small sampling of my family and friends found these ones to be the most popular (described in a similar way to how Friends episodes were named, they all started with “the one with”):

Doritos – the one with the crystal ball and free Doritos. This commercial was actually created by two unemployed brothers, not an ad agency.

CareerBuilder.com – the one where a koala gets punched.

Doritos – the one where Doritos gave an ordinary human superpowers…until he finished the bag.

Bud Light – the one where a man was thrown out of a window for suggesting eliminating Bud Light from meetings as a way to cut costs. Even though the first suggestion that was made was to cut back on marketing, this one was one of my favorites.

Some of these are in line with the official ratings, some aren’t. The five most popular commercials, according to AdMeter, were: